PROJECTS > MASENO WatSan

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

KWAHO/ADA - WatSan in Maseno/Kisumu District

A community prays for God's blessing for the drilling.

Location

Maseno and Kombewa Divisions

Key Components

Water Supply, Sanitation, Hygiene Education, Capacity Building, Income Generating Activities

Brief description of project goal, objectives and expected results

Maseno Water and Sanitation Project is in Kisumu district and it has been on for the last 12 years. So far more than 50,000 people have benefited from the project through improved access to clean water supply by drilled community boreholes, construction of ferro cement water tanks in institutions, EcoSan toilets and VIP latrines in homesteads and schools, spring protection etc.

By September 2008, the project, in addition to the two divisions of Maseno and Kombewa, will have expanded to new locations that also border the project namely, Dago sub-location in East Kisumu location of Winam Division, Kanyangwa sub-location in West Asembo location, Bondo District and Gem in Siaya District. These areas border the current project area to the West, East and North.

Project Outputs

The project will provide 22 women groups with water and sanitation facilities. In addition to providing boreholes through women groups, the project will this period continue to provide the same through schools and other institutions. To facilitate this, the schools and the health centres are required to form water committees. Project activities will continue to be those of community mobilisation / training, physical implementation (drilling and construction of wells, development of sanitation facilities, assistance on homestead sanitation facilities, construction of water tanks), training, documentation, monitoring and evaluation and networking. In addition, the project will this time address the issue of poverty alleviation very seriously. Also to be addressed will the idea of micro financing, and the application of various roof catchment technologies.
The broad objectives will be, as they were before, to improve community standards of living, through provision of clean, safe, adequate, accessible and reliable water through the drilling of boreholes, construction of roof catchment facilities and spring protection and also through provision of relevant skills through training on all aspects of project facilities.
The broad objective also involves the improvement of the health and sanitation standards through training, education and promotion of health and hygiene. It also involves improvement of the environment and introduction of IGAs, especially amongst women groups.

A almost finished ferro cement tank for rain water
harvesting in the Maseno project area.

Project objectives

To improve community’s standards of living through the provision of clean, safe adequate, reliable and accessible water through the drilling of wells, and developing of rain harvesting facilities.
The goal is also to build and provide relevant skills for O&M, management and sustainability to the communities through training.
To improve community’s health and sanitation standards through training, and provision of sanitary facilities.
To encourage women in communities to initiate and manage their own IGAs to improve incomes.
To ascertain that there is proper environment management and protection.

Implementing strategy

The project will carry out the following activities:

Community Mobilisation (meeting women groups, meeting community leaders, holding seminars and workshops, household surveys)
Training water committees and groups (leadership, communication and organisation skills, Operation and maintenance of facilities, Records keeping, Management, Income generating activities, Health and sanitation, Sustainability issues i.e gender issues, Environmental protection)
Physical implementation (drilling and construction of wells and tanks for roof catchment, spring protection, sanitation facilities)
Monitoring, follow ups and evaluation
Documentation - The basis of obtaining this data will be from:
Written documents - both internal and external. The local community has unwritten but useful information. KWAHO as an organisation has over the years collected vast information, and lastly KWAHO partners (donors, government and the universities) can also provide very valuable and useful information.
Networking

A community mobilisation workshop.

Targets groups, Partners and Collaborators

The project works with women and encourage them to initiate, run and manage the activities and empower them through training and creation of capacity among them. To ensure sustainability, the community is encouraged to work as a team with men and women pooling together.

Challenges and opportunities

Climatic risks: long lasting droughts affect the implementation of the projects; good planning and ability to co-operate assure the success of the project. If operation, maintenance, management, sustainability are weak, great risks for losing facilities will appear. Therefore:

there is training on relevant skills (disaster preparedness
establishment of savings
Initiation of income generating activities to prepare and protect and enable adaptation of risks.

Expected Outputs and Impact of KWAHO/ADA Projects

As the project fulfils and realises the above goals the following results are expected at the end of the program period:

Majority of the target communities have been supplied with clean, safe, reliable and accessible water.
The community has the capacity (relevant skills) to manage, operate, maintain, sustain and replicate facilities
Communities have improved standards in health and sanitation
Communities income has improved